County to consider speeding up flood bond projects after...

1of3Residents walk past debris line homes along Village Springs Drive in the Elm Grove Village subdivision, Friday, May 10, 2019, in Kingwood. Flash flooding caused several home in the neighborhood to take in water.Photo: Jason Fochtman, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

2of3A sinkhole opened in the 1600 block of Hamblen Road near Redbud Lane in Kingwood during storms on May 8.Photo: Nguyen Le / Staff Photo

The Harris County Flood Control District will explore how to speed up the county’s $2.5 billion bond program, at the request of Commissioners Court Tuesday, after residents spoke for more than two hours about last week’s flooding in Kingwood.

Court members expressed support for committing even more funds to ensure 230-plus bond projects could be completed more quickly than the planned 10-year period.

“I think we’ve got to quit playing around with this conversation and really say to Flood Control that if we do want to fix things sooner rather than later, then what is that dollar amount?” Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia said. “Is it $5 million? Is it $10 million?”

County Judge Lina Hidalgo asked for a list of options, with accompanying price tags, to improve the pace and efficiency of the bond program.

Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle suggested the flood control district adopt a “manager of managers” model similar to that of NASA, under which the county would contract most of the on-the-ground work to private firms.

Russ Poppe, the district’s executive director, agreed to return with suggestions at the June 4 meeting, and said completing projects more quickly may be possible.

“If we want to come up with a more detailed approach of how we can potentially execute these projects more quickly, I would certainly take you up on your offer to get more resources to help us look at how we can do that,” Poppe said.

He warned, however, of the risks of speeding up the bond program approved by voters last August. The county plans to use about $900 million of the bond funds to secure matching federal dollars. Beginning projects before a federal partner has been secured could leave the county without reimbursement, he said.

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Even in a region as populous as the Houston area, Poppe expressed concern that building more projects simultaneously could push the cost of labor and raw materials higher, which would make city of Houston flood protection efforts more expensive, too.

Other challenges cannot be solved simply with money. The flood control district and engineering department have struggled to find enough qualified employees to work on the bond program, and environmental permitting requirements on some projects have no shortcuts.

Court members spent the entire morning session Tuesday listening to Kingwood residents recount the latest round of flooding in the northeastern Harris County community, after stronger-than-expected storms this past week. Preliminary data compiled by County Meteorologist Jeff Lindner shows extremely heavy rainfall, including bursts of 3 inches in 30 minutes, flooded streets and homes before stormwater could reach nearby bayous.

“We got eight inches in our home. We lost everything,” said Gillian Reidy, who said her family moved to the neighborhood in 2017 because it had a reputation for staying dry during storms.

Several residents cried as they described flooding in Elm Grove, a neighborhood of single-family homes between U.S. 59 and the east fork of the San Jacinto River. Many of their neighbors, they said, are less well-off than families in other Kingwood enclaves, and many lack the savings needed to rebuild.

They asked Hidalgo to issue a disaster declaration for the area, which she has resisted. Hidalgo said the flood-prone area community is in dire need of better protection, but said the reported amount of damage from the storms does not appear to meet the criteria for federal help, which include $17 million in insured damages and $42 million in uninsured damages.

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“I wouldn’t do that to offer folks false hope, because no aid will come unless the federal government sees we’ve submitted an application showing we’ve met certain thresholds,” Hidalgo said.

Hidalgo urged home and business owners to report flood damage to the county and the city, and said she was open to exploring the county’s options if the threshold is met. The county has counted 131 swamped homes in Kingwood to date.

The storms, which struck weeks before the June start of the Atlantic hurricane season, illustrate the lag time between county officials’ decisions on flood control and tangible results. Commissioners Court successfully lobbied voters to pass the flood bond last summer, but little work has been completed so far.

The program includes more than $367 million for the Kingwood area, a sizable sum on paper that is of little solace to Elm Grove residents who wait for garbage trucks to remove soggy drywall, furniture and carpets from their front lawns.

Poppe said his staff has begun work on 156 projects, most of which are in the design phase. The flood control district continues to work on a schedule for the projects, the order of which has been the focus of intense debate, Deputy Director Matt Zeve said.

In the meantime, Poppe urged homeowners to purchase flood insurance regardless of how their neighborhoods have fared in past storms.

“Every flood is unique,” Poppe said. “For four weeks now, we’ve had billboards all over town saying you might not live in a mapped floodplain, but we all live in a floodplain.”

Zach Despart covers Harris County for the Chronicle, including Commissioners Court and flood control. He came to Houston from the Burlington Free Press in Vermont and was also the managing editor of the Houston Press. In 2017 he won the Best Feature award from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for his feature on Venezuelan corruption in Houston and Miami. He is a New York native and graduate of the University of Vermont. Follow him on Twitter or email him at zach.despart@chron.com.